PESHAWAR
Reaffirming his party’s stance on meaningful negotiations between the government and militants, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health minister on Sunday offered office facilities to the Taliban.
“There is nothing new in this offer as it was earlier offered by our party chief Imran Khan to Taliban,” Shaukat Yousufzai told Pakistan Today over the telephone.
Earlier, while inaugurating weekly anti-polio vaccination drive in Peshawar, Yousufzai told reporters that he was satisfied with the peace talks and offered office facilities to the banned outfit Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan in Peshawar.
To a question, the minister said, “PTI is not only insisting on dialogues with Taliban but even had offered maximum facilitation to both the sides in this respect. If Taliban have an office in Peshawar then there is no need for the government committee members to travel to North Waziristan.” He, however, said, “We have no concern that they can go talk either in Afghanistan or in India.”
Yousufzai said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in particular and rest of the country in general had been badly affected by terrorism and on such grounds Imran Khan-led PTI was insisting on dialogues with the Taliban. He said that purposes of such dialogues to bring back the Taliban into political process, which could be better for the country and its future. He said that PTI not only attached hope to the dialogue process but was determined to extending support and cooperation.
Referring to weekly Sehat Ka Insaf drive against nine diseases, he said, “Our target was around 350,000 children from 95 union councils but due to security reasons, we couldn’t cover a few UCs, situated on boundaries with tribal areas of Khyber and Dara Adam Khel.” He said that they were close to their objectives of vaccinating 700,000 children in a few weeks.
Meanwhile, in connection with the vaccination process, under Section 144, motorcycling was completely banned whereas around 4,000 policemen were deployed in Peshawar.
Police opened fire on two motorcyclists after they refused to stop at a check post.
